Then it came to him. He had been this way when seeking out the Sons of Liberty.
That was it! He had to warn Zeke and the others. He had babbled their address to his Amazon inquisitors. He had to warn them. Unless it was too late. It probably was too late. The Hippolyte’s warriors had probably descended on the hapless revolutionaries like a flow of lava.
But he had to see. In spite of his own danger, he owed it to the others to make the attempt. He screwed up his face in memory. He wasn’t so very far from the spot where the unknown assassin had shot at him. Yes, it was down this way.
As he walked, his lucidity returned, though he still felt nausea from the wringer through which he had put his body. He had drunk an unbelievable amount of alcohol, in far too short a time. Happily, he had vomited much of it up before it had gotten fully into his bloodstream.
He went down this street, up that, his appearance no longer attracting the atttention of others. In his garb he resembled his fellow pedestrians. It had only been his gait, before, that had singled him out. He looked down at his clothing to see if he had messed it at the height of his illness. No, it was reasonably clean and unwrinkled.
This was where the shooting match had taken place. It looked considerably different in the light of day. He went more slowly. And this was Heliopolis Street. It was to his surprise that he saw no vehicles before Number 35. No vehicles, nor could he spot any of the Hippolyte’s guards. If they were in the vicinity, they would probably be hidden, he realized. But there was nothing he could do about that. He was weaponless and still shaky, but he had to make the attempt.
He pounded on the door, and leaned against it. He was tired from the exercise of his walk, and the drinking had robbed him of considerable strength. He could hear no movement beyond. He pounded again and again.
In exasperation, he tried the knob. The door pushed open.
He went on through. Had the Amazon warriors already been here, and captured the Sons of Liberty on the premises? Were they hidden inside, waiting for more unsuspecting men of the underground to show up? He could readily believe it.
Frowning in memory, he retraced the way Zeke had taken him the night before. They had come along this patio garden. There was still no sound in the building. It gave the place an eerie quality. There was the fountain, it was the fountain, it was less attractive in the full light of day. The house had an unkempt quality. Well, it was a secret underground base, not fundamentally a home.
Here was the sparsely furnished room Zeke had taken him to. He entered, his eyes going around. The bottle of wine and three glasses were still there on the table.
And in a corner, bound, lay the excitable, emotional Lybian Zeke had introduced as Teucer. He was bound and gagged, and his eyes were wide at Ronny’s entrance. He blinked energetically, as though in warning.
Ronny was about to turn, his reflexes still slow, when his assailant hit him from behind.
Even as he fell automatically into a defensive position, he knew the attack was lacking in sophistication. It was the vigorous but unscientific attack of one who had never studied hand-to-hand combat. He ducked and spun right in instinctive counterattack and snagged a section of the other’s garment. He felt a blow against his upper back and ignored it.
Still holding onto the other’s tunic, he spun again, twisting the garment in such a way that one of the enemy’s arms was immobilized. He felt another couple of meaningless blows; the other had a sap, or possibly was using the butt of a shooter, but he was pathetically inept.
It was over almost immediately. Ronny bent and swung, throwing the other heavily against the wall. He heard air escape agonizingly from his opponent’s lungs.
Ronny looked at him shakily for a moment. His eyes still weren’t completely used to the gloom of the unlit room, after coming in from the bright Amazonian sunlight. It was just a kid, a youngster of possibly seventeen or eighteen, and none too large for his age. No wonder he had been so easy to take. His small club, which looked as though it had been improvised from a broom handle, had fallen to the floor. The youngster was unconscious, which wasn’t surprising. Ronny would have been more gentle had he known the other’s age and size.
He looked back to Teucer, still attempting to blink signals to him. “All right,” he growled. He knelt before the other and began to untie him. As a preliminary, he pulled the gag from the slight man’s mouth. “What in Zen’s happened?”
“Get me out of these nardy ropes,” Teucer rasped. “How do I know what happened? This young cloddy must have got behind me and slugged me one. When I woke up, I was tied like this.”
“Where’s Zeke?”
“He’s gone to keep an appointment with Damon and some of the others. Listen—”
“Just a minute. Leaving you alone?” The other was about free.
Teucer came to his feet rubbing his wrists. He bent and rubbed his ankles. “Yes. Listen, I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
“I’ll say we do. The Hippolyte is onto this place. Is there a back entrance?”
Teucer stared at him. “How?” he blurted.
“Scop. They put me on Scop and I slipped everything.”
Teucer groaned. “Come on. Yes, there’s a back way. Hurry, we’ve got to get somewhere we can talk.” He sped toward the rear of the house, evidently assuming Ronny was immediately behind.
But there was something about this Ronny Bronston didn’t like. He looked down at the unconscious boy. He bent over him and began to search his belt wallet, finding precious little except an hours card. He thought about it, and pocketed the plastic. The other’s name was Tanais, and he belonged to the Terpsichore
There was a banging at the front door.
They’d come at last. Ronny came hurriedly erect. As he started for the door, he looked down at the boy. He shook his head. Even had there been reason, he wasn’t up to escaping burdened with the kid. And there was no reason.
He turned and hurried after Teucer, and even as he ran he realized that something had been wrong about Teucer. He had been more collected, less emotional and shrill than the night before. In view of the circumstances, it would have been more reasonable had it been the other way.
He was about to leave the patio garden through the exit which Teucer had taken when he heard the front door bang open. A voice yelled, “Hey! Wait? Holy Jumping Zen, what goes on here?”
It was a male voice.
Ronny came to a halt and turned. It was the burly Zeke, rumbling in, bear-like, a large handgun in one overgrown paw.
Zeke took him in, snorted, and disappeared from sight into the room where Teucer had been bound. Ronny returned, shooting a glance at the door to the street. Zeke had slammed it shut upon his entrance, and thrown a bar.
The Sons of Liberty leader was staring at the still unconscious boy and at the ropes which had once held Teucer.
“Zen,” he groaned. “The funker escaped.” He bent over the youngster. “Out cold!”
Ronny was in the doorway, his face in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
“When did you get here?”
“A few minutes ago.” He shook his head. There was still nausea in his stomach and his muscles were like water, particularly after the exertion of the brief struggle. “Teucer was tied up.”
“Tied up, is right?” The funker is a traitor, a spy! What happened? What happened to Tanais, here?”
The effects of the Come-Along were evidently completely gone but the Scop was still on him. Ronny couldn’t have lied had he wished. He said, “The door was open. I came in to warn you. Teucer was tied up. The boy, here, jumped on my back. I knocked him out before I realized he was just a kid. Teucer told me some cock-and-bull story, evidently, and took off through the back.”
Zeke was on one knee at the side of Tanais, his gun at the half-ready, as though not knowing what to expect. He said, “Tanais came from Lybia a few days ago as an exchange student. This morning he contacted us. Teucer had told us that was where he was from and we accepted him. But we
